


between the wars, we danced

by prettydizzeed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Magic, dot is a badass and deserves better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 13:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11601825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: The Shadowhunter saves her life. Indirectly, but still; the Shadowhunter needs a place to stay, needs a warlock nearby, so Dot takes her home.





	between the wars, we danced

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "Between the Wars" by Allman Brown, the song played after Jocelyn's death

The Shadowhunter saves her life. Indirectly, but still; the Shadowhunter needs a place to stay, needs a warlock nearby, so Dot takes her home. Hides her in the open air of a busy city. The Shadowhunter saves her life, so Dot traces spells into the walls, like finger painting. She feels young from all this hope.

The Shadowhunter comes home bleeding, and Dot paints blue sparks all over her skin. The Shadowhunter's daughter forgets and forgets and forgets. Dot doesn't. The Shadowhunter brings home a man whose eyes flash green and Dot goes outside. Flicks her fingers. _Protect this house._

They do. Luke patrols, sometimes on four wheels, sometimes on four legs. Dot presses patterns into the brick. And the Shadowhunter's daughter comes home with Magnus’s magic still simmering around her head.

They cook. Dot washes her hands the same way she cleans a sword. They bandage wounds and she spreads a blue glow across their skin like a salve. The Shadowhunter and the werewolf kiss, and Dot stands on the balcony, running her fingers over the railing.

The Shadowhunter is an artist, too, but she uses a paintbrush.

*

When the wards break, it splinters all her fingernails. It sends her flying backwards into a wall she has caressed every day for eighteen years. It makes her think about eternity, about the short fragment she has spent speaking safety over a woman whose art is full of green eyes. Dot didn't fit the color scheme.

The apartment is collapsing like a broken heart, every surface reflecting Dot’s fingerprints and asking why they weren't enough. When she makes the portal, her hands tremble.

*

(She is told, later, after a ceremony she isn't allowed to attend, as if her tears would taint it, that the Shadowhunter trusted her with the potential for incomprehensible power, disguised it as a gift. She does not point out that the Shadowhunter did not trust her enough to make her aware of this fact, and was either too arrogant or too indifferent to consider what would happen to Dot if someone else found out.

She wonders, sometimes, what kind of person the Shadowhunter would have been if she'd been allowed to be a person, not a weapon, not a cause, not a disguise. Not a Shadowhunter. She wonders, sometimes, if the Shadowhunter could only bring herself to kiss the werewolf’s arms because they'd once held runes.)

*

The Shadowhunter's daughter saves her life. She says Dot is like a sister to her, and Dot does not say how many wars she's lived through. Does not tell her not to make that metaphor. Does not mention her mother.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell with me on tumblr about how messed up it is that jocelyn risked dot's life by giving her the card hiding the Cup and never told her... @basilhallward or my Downworlder appreciation sideblog @downworldersdeservebetter
> 
> feel free to send me prompts/hc's or just come chat!


End file.
